Tim woke up, but he wouldn't talk to the police. He played dumb, pretending he didn't know anything. Couldn't remember. Too much blood loss, he said. The one time he'd helped someone, and look where it got him? If any one of us had figured him for being afraid, he'd have flattened us. Not that we'd blame him if he was afraid. They hadn't just plunged the knife into his side. They'd criss-crossed his chest with it, scoring deep enough to bleed heavily but not enough to damage any other organs. Just the stomach puncture, which the doctor said wasn't so bad as far as stomach punctures go. Another sixteenth of an inch, though…

Darry never did let me see him at the hospital. And though he struggled over the decision, he brought Tim to our place after he was discharged. I heard him and Soda deliberating on the night before Tim was released. Darry didn't want him at our place. It isn't that he doesn't care about Tim. He was worried the wrong people would find out where he was and would try again. And if they did, they'd have me in the same house as a bonus. Soda argued Tim shouldn't be left alone yet. He was still on painkillers, which made him sleep a lot, and he was still sore enough that he wasn't getting around all that well. Two-Bit's mom would have a fit, and Steve's place wouldn't work, either. Steve himself spent as little time there as possible, avoiding his old man whenever he could.

So Tim wound up staggering in our door and lived on our sofa for four days. It was nice to have him around, if you want to know. I was beyond bored to the point of being numb. Tim was a pleasant distraction. I'd bring him food and drinks and doped up the way he was, he sometimes got chatty as he drowsed there in that place halfway between waking and sleep. He said some pretty wild stuff. Almost like he was a Catholic sitting in confession. If Darry and Soda knew the sorts of tales he was telling me, Soda might not have won the argument about whether or not to take him in.

The other odd thing about having Tim around was that even though it was only four days, time seemed to accelerate while he was there, and it didn't stop once he went back to his own place. As if out of nowhere, we ended up on the 24th of August, on the eve of the follow-up hearing.

"Pony?" Darry stepped out on the porch, where I was trying to read a book. Thunder growled softly in the distance. I just looked up and waited. He sat down beside me on that ratty old sofa and stared out at the sky. "You've been sort of quiet today," he said. I wondered how anyone could tell, seeing as how I hardly talked, anyway.

I shrugged. "Social worker says this new judge is a good thing, right?"

Darry nodded but didn't move. "Doesn't mean much," he admitted. "I'm still pretty nervous. How about you?"

I was surprised Darry admitted to feeling afraid. But come to think of it, it seemed like he'd been making a point to tell me how he was feeling more often lately. Considering he never used to say a word about himself, these few times when he'd let his guard down lately were pretty significant. Like an olive branch extended. Like finding my brother again under the cold, hard shell he'd been wearing. Just realizing it was a shell had done a lot to fix things between us, without him even saying a word.

"Pony?"

I looked up at him. His face was still the careful mask it always was. Cool. Hard. But now I could sort of see past it, as if that mask was halfway transparent and everything he tried to hide was just below it. The little line between his eyebrows. The tightness at the corners of his mouth. The tiny twitch of his jaw you'd miss as easily as you might get lucky enough to notice.

"What if she's wrong?" I asked. "Or what if the camp told them about Paul, about all that stuff I hadn't said before? What if they don't understand I didn't want to do it?" I was suddenly cold though it was quite warm and very sticky outside.

Darry scooted closer. He'd been on the other end, with a whole person's width between us. This was another thing that had changed. We could talk without Soda between us to moderate the conversation, to make sure the lines of communication stayed open. We bumbled at it. It was awkward and clumsy more often than not. But in some ways, it was almost easier to admit things to each other without Soda there…a fact that surprised the both of us equally, I think.

Darry was shaking his head now. "I've been thinking about that a lot, too," he admitted, sighing heavily. "I don't think it will happen that way, but if it does…" He hesitated. Under the mask I saw the faintness of a little desperation. "Pony, you've got to try really hard not to clench up the way you do. I know why you do it, why you had to do it. But this isn't the time to go blank. You know what I mean?"

Yeah. It was better to show emotion in court. Cry, even. Anything that would show the judge how messed up I was over it. That's what Darry was saying. It would be the last thing I'd ever consider doing, and he knew it. I just got colder. I mean, if Darry's sitting out here telling me not to close up, he must really think there's a good possibility that no one will believe me about Paul.

"I guess," I said aloud. I wanted to remind him again that the social worker had said this change to Judge Watts was a good thing, but I didn't. Repeating the same argument, showing him the same weak hope I'd been clinging to…it would just worry him more, I think.

The next morning, things felt a lot like they had the last time we'd gotten up to go to a hearing. Funereal silence filled the house. We all just rustled quietly about our business, getting showered, getting dressed. I wished I hadn't had breakfast earlier, because it felt like I was going to bring it up at any second. Not that I'd eaten much of it in the first place. Mostly we'd all pretended at it, pushing food around on plates only to scrape most of it into the trash.

Eventually, however, even the moments you most dread come to pass. We sat quietly in the courtroom as Judge Watts, who looked really young in spite of his silver hair, sat looking through the letters I'd written home to Darry and Soda as well as the letter from Kurt. Turns out Judge Watts did have the full scoop on what had happened at camp, including the whole horrible episode with Paul. Much to my surprise, Wade and Miller made an appearance. They had nothing but good things to say about me, but I still felt cold through the entire hearing, waiting almost numbly for it to be over or for the judge to ask questions.

Finally, though, he just dropped the letters, which he held and flipped through throughout the entire hearing, and said his piece. "A fifteen year old boy who is forced at gun point to abet a criminal is not himself a criminal. A boy who runs away at the very thought of being ripped from his home and turned over to the state is not a criminal. A boy who stands up against the sort of bullying and harassment that went on at the Raton City Juvenile Military Camp is not a criminal. A boy who witnesses claim ran full clip on an injured knee to embrace his frantic brothers is not unhappy in his home. Unlucky, yes. Impulsive enough to run out of the house in a temper, absolutely."

I sat with cautious optimism hammering in my chest alongside my heartbeat. It sounded like more positives than negatives, but sometimes you couldn't tell by that.

Watts took off his spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Everything described to me by the state, Mr. Klein, is nothing more than a portrait of youth and naïveté, not delinquent behavior. Ponyboy Curtis gets almost straight As in school and his brother has held a steady job at a DX gas station for the last two years. Neither of these young men strike me as anything other than young men who got caught up in something bigger than either one could hope to control. I see no reason to change the order of things at this time. I certainly don't see a reason to uproot either of these young men from what appears to be a loving home."

Klein looked irritated but unsurprised. I'll bet he was hoping for a judge who would overturn everything Harmon had done and stick us both in the Howard McLeod Correctional Center down in Atoka. I was almost afraid to get too excited. It was hard to believe after everything that happened that it was finally over. I wasn't in trouble for what happened with Paul. At least not in Oklahoma. I wasn't sure if I could still be in trouble for it in regards to the court martial, but somehow I didn't think so.

We left the courthouse on a buzz of relieved excitement. Darry took us both over to the Mercury Diner to celebrate. It had been a long time since I'd felt so good, so free. I thought of those wild mustangs and realized that watching them, what I'd felt most was envy. They lived free, charging down the plains. Nothing hanging over them. With me, on the other hand, even though several weights had been lifted off of me this summer, I was surprised with each new one that lifted that I could feel even better yet.

After the hearing, there was one last week of summer before school would start the day after Labor Day. As it happened, the day after the hearing we had a horrible storm with tornado force winds even though no funnels were spotted. The construction company Darry works for was flooded with calls to repair roofing all over town. Though he was fairly exhausted most nights, and Soda had to give him more than a few rub downs, Darry accepted all the extra work. It would help with the hospital bills sure enough, and since Judge Watts had further stipulated that all our court costs be carried by the state, I guess Darry's own shoulders had a lot less weight on them, too.

On Sunday evening, the day before Labor Day, Darry came home from pulling yet more overtime. He looked pretty wrecked. Soda had just come home, himself, but I knew he'd waited to start dinner to see if Darry needed a back rub. I stayed on the porch steps and kept reading. If Soda needed me, he'd come get me. I was surprised when the screen door creaked just a few minutes later, and Darry came out with a fresh shirt on and a towel slung over his shoulders.

"How's it going, Pony?" he asked.

The air was charged up with something, but I wasn't sure what.

"Okay, I guess," I shrugged.

"One more day of vacation," Darry mused. "You ready for school?"

I nodded. "Sure." I was looking forward to it, in fact. He couldn't keep me home from school, whether there was a chance of Taran's guys getting hold of me on his behalf or not. Could he? Or was that why he seemed tense just now?

Darry reached down between us on the steps and picked up a small twig that rested there. I'd missed it, I guess, when I'd swept the porch earlier. He fiddled with it absently. "Pony, there's something I've been thinking about since that night you told us about Paul."

I tensed up even more. Maybe he could try to keep me home. Maybe that's what this was about. I opened my mouth to object, but he continued talking.

"Some of the things you said that night really got to me. I've been meaning to talk to you about it ever since, but things have just been so crazy. You might not remember," he said softly, still not looking at me. He stared straight out at the street, turning that twig over and over with his fingers. "You talked about having to get through everything alone out there, at camp. But I got the feeling that you weren't just talking about camp. Maybe you were feeling like all this stuff that's been happening the past couple years…like you had to get through it, all of it, alone." He threw the twig out into the yard and glanced at me. He started to look away, but then he seemed to change his mind and held my gaze. "Maybe at camp you had to get through things alone. And you did it. You did it, Pony. You're a good kid, Ponyboy. A strong kid. But you're dead wrong about one thing. You don't have to get through things alone. You could be anywhere in the world, but if I thought for one second that you needed me, I'd find a way to get to you. Both of us would. Me and Soda."

I looked away. There was too much feeling in his words, and there was too much feeling in me. But Darry wouldn't let me hide. He put a hand on my shoulder and ducked his head, trying to meet my eyes again. I looked at him. It was impossible and yet it was easy all at once, which I know doesn't make any sense.

"Pony," he said quietly, "if I'd have known how bad things were for you at that camp, I'd have been right there trying to pull you out before Kent took things as far as he did. But your letters home," he shook his head, "things didn't seem so bad. You were alone this time, and I wish it were different. But the one thing you've got to take away from this is it's okay to ask for help. Everybody needs some sometimes. It's okay to be afraid. If I didn't have you and Soda to come home to…" Darry shook his head again, "Man, I don't know if I'd still even be breathing."

We just sat in silence for a few minutes. I thought about what he said. After everything life had thrown at us over the last couple years, it truly was somewhat of a miracle that any of us were still standing. Maybe I was so busy looking inward that I failed to notice all along that I had two people standing in my corner all along. Not just Soda, but Darry, too. Maybe I was so busy with my own feelings that I forgot to notice Darry had feelings, too. These weren't new thoughts. These thoughts had occurred to me the night me, Johnny, and Dallas, were brought back into Tulsa by ambulance. But even though they felt like they stuck then, maybe they hadn't. Maybe it takes one try to understand something so important.

Darry and Soda, they were like a safety net. Each in their own way, they'd done a little bit of saving me this summer. They were a touchstone in my life. Nothing else that came later could ever compare to the bonds we shared. I'd known that about Soda all along, of course, but Darry…it took me a long time to come around to the truth of it, that Darry and I might never see things in exactly the same way. But it was time––well past time, in fact––that we started seeing each other.

Darry and I just sat out there on the steps together for a long time. We didn't say much, we just watched the sky together until Soda poked his head out to tell us dinner was ready. Then I stood up, and I offered a hand to Darry, who looked sort of pained at the thought of having to move at all. He cracked a grin at me and put his hand in mine, laughing when Soda had to come and help. But we did it together, the three of us. Even though life would probably prove me wrong a hundred times over, just then nothing felt impossible. Life felt as though it had been cracked wide open, a million branches shooting out in all directions, each one a different path we could take. And even though we might wander away from each other from time to time, all those paths had one thing in common.

They all led us back to one another.

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A/N: Ok. So it still has some loose ends. This story was getting a bit too long, so I decided to end it there and worry about any loose ends in a series of shorter blips…maybe two or three chapters each. I definitely have some plans for Darry and Maggie that didn't get covered here. As for the rest, I welcome any feedback on what you'd like to see developed, if anything. Thanks for reading!